Jelly Roll, now 260 pounds after shedding 300+, credits metformin (500 mg daily), emotional work, and a shift from binge eating to nutrient-dense foods like berries for his transformation. His first bow hunt with Cam Haynes failed due to spooking deer, but he embraced the discipline as a "moving meditation," later mastering an 85-pound elk shot after 70 hours of practice. Overcoming trauma and shame tied to obesity, he now prioritizes usefulness over fleeting happiness, dedicating songs like Hard Fought Hallelujah and Save Me to redemption. Accepted into the Grand Ole Opry, he calls it a "super legend" moment, urging listeners that authenticity—even in struggle—can lead to life-changing growth. [Automatically generated summary]
I don't want to get super spiritual out the gate, but I will because I think God wants me to right now because you saying that.
There's a scripture in the Bible that says, in Christ, all things are a new creation, which I thought was interesting because it didn't talk about restoring the old.
It says that in God, we are a completely new creation.
You know what I mean?
So like, I was looking at it at first, like, I'm restoring my heart.
But then when you're saying that, I'm like, no, I didn't restore my heart.
Different cell types have very different lifespans, and some last a lifetime.
I think neurons last a lifetime.
Seven-year figure is a rough average estimate of cell age.
Oh, okay.
So it's not a total myth.
Not a fixed cycle where everything is swapped out all at once.
Some tissues renew very fast while others renew slow, slowly, or hardly at all, which averages out to several years if you look at all the cells together.
So intestinal lining cells renew every two to five days.
Wow.
Stomach lining turns over roughly every two to nine days.
Skin surface cells replace roughly every few weeks.
Liver cells are typically renewed on time scales of many months to up to a few years.
Bone cells take up to a decade to fully remodel the skeleton.
It's like, and I heard Tony Robbins once say that we grossly overestimate what we can do in a year and we underestimate what we can do in a decade.
And for people that might be listening to this that are dealing with severe obesity, I want to give you this game.
You will grossly overestimate what you can do in 90 days, but underestimating what you can do in a year when it comes to your health.
Like it was right around my 30s.
I turned 41 three days ago and it was right around my 39th birthday that I started really considering taking the step to try to make a major change in my life.
And I thought about it around my birthday because I knew my next one was 40.
You know what I mean?
And I was like, I don't think I've ever met a 500-pound 40-year-old.
And I was like, man, I should really start trying to figure this out.
I felt like I could feel myself dying, Joe.
You know, and it was crazy because I spent most of my life thinking that when I got to this point, or that I never thought I'd get to this point, we'll start there as far as success.
Thank you for letting me have this space because this is what I want people to hear is that every time I thought I had a critical moment, it was an emotional moment.
So I'd get all fired up.
I've been trying to lose this weight my whole life.
And I'd yo-yo 50, 70 pounds down, go back up.
Me and my nutritionist, Ian Larios, were looking at notes yesterday.
I spent most of 2022 between 480 and 560 pounds like that year.
That's how much I fluctuated in just a year up and down.
Crazy.
So it's like, I was just such a, so when I sat down to try to lose it this time, I said, I'm going to take a different approach.
I'm going to really take my time with it.
And I'm going to think about what I'm doing and be intentional.
I'm not going to let it be an emotional thing where you just jump up and go, I'm going to go run into D.
And I was like, let me figure this out.
And clearly, I've dealt with drug addiction.
So I was like, maybe there's something here.
Like, how come I actually have this in my notes?
Overeating wasn't a failure of willpower for me.
It was a biological loop that I didn't know how to interrupt.
You can imagine I started, and with that mentality, I said, well, the first thing I'll do is, let me, you know, how can I cut back how much I'm eating?
And less eating periods.
But the first thing I did was started.
Every time I said I was going to lose the weight, Joe, I said, I lied to myself.
We talked about this.
I would tell myself, I'm going to do this.
I'm going to go do that.
And then I'd go tell my family that.
So the lie started with me, though.
You know, there's a big person listening to this right now or a drug addict or somebody who wants to change some part of their life that right now is going, I'm going to start next Monday, you know, or I'm going to start Friday or I'm going to start.
They have a start date.
And then that Monday comes and they never do it.
I told you, I was like every other fat fuck.
Even when I finally did it on Friday, I was like, Monday, I'm waking up and changing my life.
And I was like, but I had an idea.
I was like, I'm not cutting out food.
I'm not dealing with nothing crazy.
I'm going to do two small things first.
I'm going to cold plunge because I've been watching Dana White do it and it seems to be working for him.
That's how just naive I was to the whole thing at first.
I was like, Dana's cold plunging.
He got in shape.
I was like, and I reached out to Gary immediately, like right around that 39th birthday, I reached out to Gary Breckin.
I just sent a message to Breck a Blind that said, do you work with fat people?
Because I hadn't seen a real case study of fat people yet.
And lucky for me, Alina, their daughter, him and Sage's daughter was a country music fan.
So she comes in, like, you ever heard of Jelly Roll?
And they're like, no.
She's like, you got to listen to this song and then you got to help him.
So Gary called and Gary was like, and I said, Gary, I'm going to start.
He said, just start by trying to get 10,000 steps a day and get in a cold plunge.
I'm like, dude, I'm 520 something pounds, Gary.
10,000 steps a day.
It's crazy talk.
But I got in the cold plunge for six minutes and I would go for a half mile walk.
That first Monday comes, Joe, it is pissing rain.
Pissing rain.
I mean, cats and dogs, dude.
And I wake up and I'm like, shit.
And I've been studying about lying to yourself.
That when you tell yourself you're going to do something and you don't do it, your body then starts to know that you don't mean what you say.
So now when you tell your body to do something, your body looks at you like, bitch, you ain't never meant what you said to me.
You've never followed through.
What do you fuck you?
You think I'm going to run because you tell me to run, dude?
You lie to me all the time.
And I was in that concept.
And I came out that morning, dressed up in my stuff.
And I was like, man, that rain's pretty hard.
And my family, and this wasn't them being a lack of support, Joe.
This was just, I think this was me lying to them for so many years.
You know, that they wanted to save me my shame again and my embarrassment.
And they go, it's okay.
I think my wife's like, it's okay, Papa.
Or my daughter was like, just wait till the rain quits or do it on the treadmill or something.
But in my mind, I was like, no, I'm going outside, you know?
And I was like, I'm done lying to y'all, and I'm done lying to me.
I told y'all I was going to go do this walk and I'm going to do this walk.
And I realized that in addiction, that in addiction, the family will kind of cater to the addict.
It's nature.
You know, like if somebody in your family was a drug addict, you would help with their kids or you would, you know, you would feel a need to help in their absence.
It's what we do as a family.
It's human nature.
And I realized then how much my addiction had been hurting his family.
You know, how much that my sex life with my wife was horrible.
Dude, I married a fucking big titty, blonde, beautiful woman, dog.
You know what I mean?
Like, I married the kind of woman that makes you smile when you're crying, Joe.
You know?
And I couldn't even get aroused.
I was so big.
I mean, I was having to play, I was having to play Twister to have sex.
Left foot here, right foot in the X. You know, are we in there yet?
Tell me if you feel something.
I mean, it was bad.
You know, my daughter, I think about my son.
You know, my brother would have to go throw football with him.
I was too big to throw the football.
And I was like, that's what my addiction has done to these people.
And here they are cheering for me.
Oh, dude, we're turning up.
We're fucking, we're going to figure this out.
So then I knew it was a mental thing.
And I read a book called The Fox, The Horse, The Mole, and the Boy.
You want to talk about a seven-minute read that will change your life?
But there's a quote in there that goes, I forgot if it was the mole, but the fox or something looks at the horse and goes, what's the hardest thing you've ever done in your life?
And the horse goes, ask for help.
Yeah.
It's just all these like really cool little things.
But when it said ask for help, I was like, wow, I need to ask for help.
It's like whenever I was addicted to drugs and I had to walk in that room for the first time and go, I don't have control.
So I called a company called OnSight that does therapy.
And I went and spent two weeks with a lady named Mary B. who wrote the curriculum for food addiction in the world.
Like she is a 80-something year old woman with glasses, sweet soul of a woman.
And we locked in the cabin.
And she said, we're going to figure out what this is.
And I spent, I'd say, maybe two or three weeks in this cabin with this sweet old woman.
And it was like no phone, out in the woods.
I walked every day.
I played with the horses.
I mean, I just went laid in grass.
And it really took me all the way back through all my years.
And it was the first time that I didn't just try to rush to lose the weight.
I tried to figure out why I was carrying the weight.
You know, and that's whenever I figured out that overeating for me wasn't a failure of discipline.
I'm a pretty disciplined guy.
It was just a biological thing.
I hadn't learned how to interrupt.
I'd been doing it my whole life.
It had been my constant go-to for stress.
It was everywhere all the time.
I was eating for, I had to start figuring out what I was actually hungry for.
You know, like when we talk about obesity, Joe, there's groups.
Like, if you're 340 pounds here, 330 pounds here, you know, it's probably, depending on your height, of course, you might be dealing with a discipline issue.
Maybe you just like extra food.
We can make small changes and get that off.
You start getting over 300, 320.
That starts being morbid obesity.
Like, there starts to be a real thing there, you know?
And I'm seeing it more now because I talk to tens, 20s of guys that are over 500 pounds that have reached out to me like, please, what is this magic, Yoda?
You know what I mean?
I'm like, I'm like, consistency is the magic.
But one, once I realized why I was eating, 80, 80, here's the note I took from therapy.
I had my wife translate all my notes from when I was out there.
And it goes, change.
First of all, you change the way you think and talk.
But because 80 to 90% of compulsive eating happens between the ears, not the teeth.
So the average obese person that's that big, and I learned this from her, is that they're only eating 20% of what they're thinking about eating.
This is an all-day loop that's in your head.
It's like a drug addiction.
You know, I used to walk in, me and Schultz laughed about this.
I used to walk in rooms and scan.
Like I would walk in a room like the Predator.
Like I would, I would do one thing like the Terminator and be able to look you in the eye and be like, there's a bottle of Snickers on that counter.
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So what happens is when your body goes to burn when you fast, it has to burn through all your insulin before it'll start burning through your reserved fat.
So when you're at that high of an insulin level in your blood, you're having to fast so you're hardly ever getting to the resort fat burnage because it's just constant insulin.
Right.
So, and this is where GO1Ps come in.
This would be a great time to talk about this.
So Gary goes, hey, man, your insulin's high.
We'll just give you a shot and this will change all this.
And I was like, cool, send it, whatever.
I'll try it.
And then my wife's manager, Mimi, started the shot, did wonders for her, but she had the worst stomach issues.
I have a bad stomach.
I started calling people and going, hey, man, how's this shot work?
And I was like, dude, we're losing weight.
Food noise is gone.
You got to try it.
I was like, what's the side effect?
It was like, one bad side effect.
It tears your gut up.
And I was, I had a, so I had bad reflux.
And, you know, that's the worst thing a singer can have.
Nothing is worse for us than reflux.
So I got scared of it.
So I called Gary and I was like, Gary, I can't do it.
I'm afraid of it.
So then I started doing research and I was like, well, if I'm not going to do this, I'm going to have to fast to get my insulin levels down a lot.
So I was fasting and I was losing like next to no weight.
And I was doing the right thing.
And as a big dude, that's the most encouraging thing, discouraging thing.
It's when you're actually not lying to people.
Because, you know, as a fat person, I'm programmed to lie like a drug addict.
Like, what did you eat today?
Oh, grilled chicken and salads.
And I just ate seven Snickers, you know?
So it's like, or I brush it off like a big thing.
My nutritionist would come in and be like, Did you eat something last night after I left?
I'd be like, Yeah, yeah, I just ate a little bit.
Not bad, just a little bit, a little bit bad.
But I wouldn't quantify what a little bit bad was.
It was, you know, it's like, so I was just in a, I, I wanted to start being way, way more honest about everything in the process.
And that was probably the biggest thing.
So I would not lose the weight.
And I'm like, I promise you, Ian, I didn't eat nothing but what you handed me, Bubba.
He's like, just stick with it.
And I just stayed with it, stayed with it.
And then Gary got turned into Gary Brecca and took over the world.
And I was lucky for me, I bumped into your friend, a guy named Brigham down here in Texas.
This lady's the lady who really Gary started this journey for me, and I'll never be able to thank him enough for it, but she brought it home.
And Gary probably would have, but she had a brick and mortar and was just easier to get to.
Gary travels the world.
And I go to her and she goes, she runs my blood again.
And my insulin got down to like 37 by fasting.
And she goes, you're against the GO1Ps, aren't you?
I was like, well, I made it this far, and I don't want to do it with an asterisk now.
Now it's just stubbornness.
At first, it started out of a fear.
Now I'm just fucking stubborn, you know?
And this is where I don't want to hide anything that I did do because I think it'll help people.
She said, there's an alternative.
She said, if you took a fourth of a dose of metformin, which 2,000 milligrams is what they would prescribe a diabetic one, let's say we give you 500 milligrams, which is a real low dose once a day, until we just see this marker go down.
She said, it might take a year because we're not trying to rush it and throw a bunch of GO1s at it.
We're like, we're just, we're going to do this really slow.
And that's what we did.
And the first month I listened to her and I was losing, you know, I think I looked at Ian's notes today.
We were losing like, you know, four to six pounds a month.
Then it got up to that 12 and 13, that number we were looking for.
You know what I mean?
Of what we expect from a guy my size.
But it was just that easy.
Now my insulin, so I said all that to give you this.
Oh, I'm so excited about this, Joe.
My insulin was over 40.
My insulin two weeks ago it weighs to well with Dr. Denise was 4.6.
My A1C was crazy, right?
And that was just, we've only been on the metformin for a year in November.
So I think we're going to come off of it now.
A1C was 6'4.
It's now 5'4, which that marker is a three-month average of your blood sugar.
Like, that's a real number to move that much.
I know it doesn't seem like a big number in a year, but that's like crazy.
My C-reactive was like in the sixes, and it's 1.2 now.
That's an inflammation marker.
Vitamin D, while I was getting sick all the time, was a 28.
Vitamin D is at 100.
This was the big one too.
And this is where you say, are you natty?
I say, no, sir, absolutely not.
I'm a 40-year-old male.
There's no way I was going to be natty.
My testosterone was one of a pre-juvenile child when you're that big.
If you want to have some like raspberries with some salt on them, or not some raspberries, rather some radishes with some salt on them and some celery.
There's nothing in that.
You just eat it and you don't have to worry at all.
You're just getting some fiber and some nutrients.
But I learned how to make all the good stuff better, by the way.
Like, not better, but Larios is really.
So a lot of my weight loss has come from, like, I used to always hear you say that you got into podcasting and talking to people about stuff you were just interested in, like conversations you just thought were cool.
And then I thought about that's like the approach to life.
That's why I said, give yourself one year, not three months.
Because if I gave myself three months, I'd have been upset.
I didn't lose enough weight.
It didn't go the way it's supposed to go.
I'd have gone back into my shame spiral.
We were talking about this.
My whole thing was stress, overwhelm, food, shame, repeat.
That's what I did.
I lived in that spiral.
You know what I mean?
And it's like, oh, I've been working hard.
I'm not getting it.
Sad me.
I'm going to go to the pantry and punish myself.
You know, I'm never going to lose this weight.
Where it's like, if I'd have just waited for the year and really said, no, man, I'm going to go birthday to birthday.
Which is why when me and Cam ran on this birthday of mine, it was so important to me because I was like, two birthdays ago was the first day I even thought about changing my life.
And even last birthday, I was 400, you know, 380 pounds.
And now this birthday, I'm running a 5K with Cam Haynes.
It's hard for people because they want immediate gratification.
You know, they really want it all to happen immediately, especially in the society that we exist in today where everything, I mean, this is why GLP1s are so enticing for people because you can get immediate gratification.
You know, and sometimes you got to just, you got to focus on little victories, these little tiny victories.
Because if you can get around a bunch of other people that are addicted to good things, then you're all just doing good things and you're all feeding off of each other.
Yeah.
It's everything, man.
You imitate your atmosphere always.
This is why I can't be around negative people.
I'm too sensitive.
And I'm around negative people.
First, I try to help them.
Then I try to coach them.
Then I try to like see the world through their eyes.
And then I'm reacting to them.
And then I'm like, fuck, man, you're not helping me.
I'm not helping you.
You're just dragging me into your vibration.
And I don't like it.
And if you don't want to change, there's not much I can do with this.
And so I got to just ghost you.
I got to separate because if you save a drowning man, you know, sometimes you can drown yourself.
I mean, that sounds cokey and new agey, but I'm telling you, man, if I don't get my time in in the woods at least a couple times a year, three or two, and I really want to do it way more often.
I just can't.
I just, I'm just too busy.
But it's, it empties all the bullshit out of my life.
The mountains don't give a fuck what's going on in your life or how many likes your last fucking social media post got or who's upset at you.
They don't care.
You know, the mountains are the mountains.
Those animals don't give a fuck if you just won the Grammy.
And then they started using their skins, so buffalo hides became valuable, but it wasn't the meat that they were after, which is crazy because they basically almost made them extinct.
They came like within a hair's breadth of making bison extinct in North America.
And they shot them all and brought them all to market.
You know, that was a lot of it.
And so then they made market hunting illegal.
And then, you know, they designated areas public land.
And, you know, this is the Teddy Roosevelt thing.
And what they did was really an amazing amazing example of conservation in North America that really doesn't exist anywhere else is our wildlife management and also our natural resources public land management.
So we have public land in North America where you could apply for a tag.
You could get it like we did with that mule deer.
We shot that mule deer in Montana.
We got a tag and went out into the Missouri Breaks.
And then we, you know, found that animal and shot it and ate it.
And anybody could do that.
You, it's part of you being an American if you fill out the right paperwork and pay for the tags and all that pays for the management of this land and for wildlife biologists and park rangers and all those kind of different people that game wardens that help you know keep all this stuff managed.
See, I didn't even know you could hunt public lands until recently whenever Cam and them were fighting back about the bill that was trying to get rid of some of it.
I told you one of them, but I'll tell you why I didn't tell you because it's way better.
I'll say this one for the air.
We're in there the first night, and it's like kind of not nippy, but it's like when the sun went down, it was cool, but it was still, you know, I was so adrenaline up.
The first night, a doe comes out, Joe, and I thought I was going to shit myself.
I mean, I had to stand up.
I farted.
My stomach was bad.
It was just so, it was every emotion I didn't think I was going to feel.
And I'm doing it with like the greatest bow hunter ever sitting behind me.
And lucky for us, Cam's a sweet dude, so he's just entertained by it.
The holidays come with a lot of traditions, gathering with family, cooking those once-a-year recipes, and leaning into the little rituals that bring everyone together.
That's something I always look forward to.
But there's another tradition I think we should all start doing during the holidays, and that's taking some time for ourselves.
This season, you do so many things for the other people in your life.
You plan get-togethers around everyone's schedule, you spend hours picking out the right gifts and cooking the right food, but you also deserve just as much attention.
Otherwise, you'll burn yourself out.
So, do yourself a favor and take some me time.
Go on a hunting trip, have a quiet night with a book, maybe even schedule a session with a therapist.
Therapy is an extremely effective way to make sure you're focusing on what you need.
And BetterHelp can easily set you up.
They have access to a wide network of fully qualified therapists, and they do a lot of the work for you.
Even if that first match isn't a good fit, you can easily switch to another therapist.
This December, start a new tradition by taking care of you.
Our listeners get 10% off at betterhelp.com/slash J-R-E.
My paperwork has been sent into my governor, and he considers pardons in every December.
So, every day, I'm just kind of praying.
You know what I mean?
But even if he gives me the pardon, unfortunately, Tennessee has a zero forgiveness policy for violent offenders.
So, I would be pardoned, but I wouldn't be adjudicated.
What's it called?
When they exonerated.
I wouldn't be the charges aren't completely gone.
So, what I'd have to do is, and this is my hope, is that my goal in this is that I want to reach out to legislation eventually and go, Hey, like, if nothing else, I'd like my run my right to hunt.
Like, it's done a lot for my mental health, it's done a lot for my physical health.
Like, it's been a being able to start going on that first bow.
These are little markers that I put on the calendar.
You know, when I'm 400-something pounds, and I'm like, All right, next year, Cam said he's taking me on my bow hunt.
I got to get there.
You know what I mean?
Like, all right, next year, I'm not going to run that 5K in an hour and a half.
I'm going to do it in 45 minutes.
You know what I mean?
Like, these are those markers.
So, I want to go to them and go, Look, I understand if you've ever raped somebody or killed somebody, but I think that every it should there should be some path to redemption, even if it takes 30 years.
Put something unrealistic up there.
You don't can't get a speeding ticket for 20 years, but like, I think it's important for people to have a path to redemption.
I'm a redemption guy, and you know, if God didn't just show me so many paths, you know what I mean?
And to grow big deer down there and to make sure that you manage the genetics correctly.
Like you don't shoot any animal that's under like six or seven years old.
And there's a place that I hunt in Utah that does that with elk.
It's like they, a really well-managed place does that.
They make sure.
So like there's some places where when they have hunting season, everybody just goes out into the woods.
Kids get a day off school and they shoot everything they can, which is great.
You get meat.
It's great.
But the problem is, if you want very impressive animals that are mature, which is also better for the entire genetics of the herd, because these are the animals that have lived a full life.
They've spread their genes.
And then you shoot them at the end, at the end of their life.
So they've had a long, full.
And by the way, when you're getting an animal that's seven, eight, nine years old, they really don't have much time left.
It's one of the only things I've ever done that when I'm standing there, even over a target, especially over a deer, but even over a target, and I pull that bow back, just like you said about the mountains.
It's also, you're going to learn how to manage your nerves, right?
So there's going to, this is a process and it's a journey.
And so along the way, you're going to have some moments where a deer comes in or an elk comes in where you're, you see your body shaking, freaking out.
But then in the future, you're going to know, okay, I know when this is coming.
Now I know how to stay calm.
And now I see this coming like, nah, bitch, we ain't getting there.
We're not going there.
We're staying right here.
I call it going dead.
Like you go dead.
Like all this anticipation and what if I miss and what if I do this and what if he runs and what if he turns?
Nothing.
I don't let nothing in.
You don't let nothing in and you just like exist like a cat.
Like you're like a cat like staring at the thing you're about to kill.
Just locked in.
There's no negative at all.
Do you ever let those emotions creep in?
You know, I asked Cam, I'm like, do you ever check your heart rate when you shoot?
And he's like, yeah, it doesn't even move.
Like, yeah, because he knows how to stay in that moment.
Well, there's a really big learning curve to hunting, particularly bow hunting.
And it's really interesting.
Like you just keep learning stuff.
Like, I've been doing it now for, I guess I've been bow hunting for 12 years or 13 years.
I guess 12 years.
And I'm still learning.
I learn all the time.
I mean, I'm, you know, it's one of the most rewarding things that I've ever done, you know, and especially in terms of like getting pretty decent at it, getting proficient at it and having a bunch of success.
And success begets more success.
I love it.
And then when you eat it, it's different than any other meal you'll ever eat.
When I pull an elk steak out of my freezer and I thaw it out and then I throw it on the Traeger and I throw some olive oil on it.
And I like this Saskatchewan black and Saskatchewan rub that they have.
It's my favorite for elk.
And I get that sucker up to 120 degrees and then I bring it inside and I sear it on a cast iron frying pan.
Then I eat it.
Oh man.
It's magical.
I remember the whack when that elbow hit him in the lungs.
I hunted with Cam this September, and I got this elk that was, he was coming over the mountains with his cows.
And we saw him.
We were like, whoa, that's a good one.
Like, we got to try to get to him.
So we had to go over the top of this ridge and go down into this valley and go through the woods.
And as we got to where he was, another elk stole his fucking cows.
And so by the time we got to the woods, we were trying to like, we were following the screams because he was still screaming.
They were screaming and the cows were.
So we get through the woods and then we realize, oh, shit, he got his cows stolen.
So his cows, we saw the last of his cows run up this hill, run up the side of this mountain, and he was going after them.
He was like slowly.
And then my guy Colton that I was with, he called.
He went, you know, he busted this little elk, the cow elk call.
And you see the elk go like this.
It's like a record skips.
You know, like, and then he turns and he's like slowly starts walking.
I was at full draw for like a minute and a half behind this tree, just holding for a minute and a half while this dude was, he was about 25 yards, but he did not like it.
He's like, something's going on here.
I don't see the cow.
What the fuck is happening here?
So he went around sideways to try to get our wind.
And as soon as he went around sideways, as soon as he got clear, I saw him put that pin on him, saw swack.
He hit him.
He was dead in 15 seconds.
15 seconds.
He got hit.
He's like, what the fuck?
He turned, started going downhill, and then fell and rolled.
And it was over like that.
And then I think of that moment every time I eat it, every time I'm cutting into that stick, I think of that crazy moment.
So right around June is when I really just kick into leg strengthening, leg conditioning, and cardio time.
Because you know you're going to have to go.
They live in the mountains, man, which is interesting because they didn't used to be like, they were more like living in the plains until people start fucking with them.
And then they like realize like the best way to get away from people is to get way up where it's difficult to get to.
So if you want to get them, you got to go where it's difficult to get to.
You can start walking tomorrow, babe, and start going forward.
And even then, it's your big goal.
Put little goals in between there.
That was another big one for me.
It was like, I had these big goals, but I didn't get, they were so far I realized I'd lose sight of them sometimes.
So you got to set them little, the little baby goals in the middle.
You know what I mean?
Those little like, you know what, I'm going to walk a mile five days this week, no matter what the weather is.
I'm going to walk a whole mile.
You know, I'm going to walk to my mailbox and back, whatever your starting point is.
And then I encourage you to start making the decision that's hard because me and Cam talked about this when we ran our 5K.
There's a hill.
My driveway comes down a driveway, comes down a hill, and you bust it right, Joe.
And then you can go left into a neighborhood, the same run I run every day.
Or you can go right up a hill.
And it is a hill hill, you know?
And the first day I came out and I looked up that hill and I looked to the left and I took two steps to the left and I stopped and I told myself, I was like, I'm learning about stories we tell ourselves.
The story I've been telling myself my whole life was take the easy way out.
My entire life, Joe, I have always looked for the path of the easiest, like A to B straight line.
When you're like, no, I'm hitting that fucking hill.
You know, because I'm big.
Fat people hate hills.
Stairs, we hate all that shit.
So I'm like, I'm like, hit the hill.
You know, and I'm walking and I'm stopping and I'm walking and I'm stopping and I'm walking and I stop.
I just kept going.
When I got to the top of it, there was a telephone pole up there and I went and slapped it.
I just slapped the shit out of it.
And I was just, I felt so achieved.
And I came down the hill and then I took a left and I was going to go straight down to the stop sign and back.
But if you take a left, you can go up another hill.
So I was in my mind, I was like, I'm going to stop sign.
I hit the hill.
But as I was walking by that other hill, I was like, this is the new you.
You hit the hill, dog.
This is the new you.
Today is the new you.
You hit the hill.
Left, hit the fucking hill.
Come back down.
On my way home that day.
Look up, see that hill.
It's right by my house.
I go, fuck, I'm going to hit it one more time.
You know what I mean?
And then it started becoming a thing where it's like, I started adopting that philosophy of life now, Joe.
I hit the hill first.
Whatever the hardest thing is, whatever scares me the most, whatever I think is going to be the most daunting of the day, it's like, put that motherfucker on the table right now.
When you elect to make these decisions, conscious decisions to do a difficult thing voluntarily, you elect to do that.
Then the rest of your life becomes way easier because the most difficult thing of your day is always the most difficult thing of your day, whether you decide to do it or whether life throws it at you.
And you can decide to give yourself some shit that's way harder than anything life's going to throw at you.
It's very important for famous people because for famous, the pressures and the weirdness of fame, most people don't understand the psychological burden that that carries, how that hits you.
And it can really fuck with you.
And one of the best ways that I've found to keep it from fucking with me is to make the hardest part of my day my choice.
I do it.
I put myself through.
So other stuff that seems difficult for other people that don't work out or don't take on challenging tasks, it's not that difficult for me.
But, God, eight hours into something like that is so nice because you know you have so much to learn.
And if you just look at it that way, like what a beautiful blessing it is to have so many opportunities to do things, so many times that you're going to be able to learn.
So much time to grow, so much time to get better.
You have so much room.
I mean, if you're already Cam Haynes, boy, it's so difficult to get better from you're the best.
Oh, it made me think about it when I was thinking about animal killing and bows, especially now because I'm thinking about this a lot, obviously.
I'm in the middle of it.
But there's this thing that's happening there where it's like the concept that back in the day a man left with this stick and piece of metal or just a stick back then, a shaved stick and a string.
It was like, if this goes good, I will come back with enough to feed our tribe.
So some Native American, probably a Comanche, because it's here in Austin.
And that guy who made that made it himself, attached it with sinew and Twine and put it on a stick that he had shaved down and put feathers on it that he had got from a bird and you know, glue that they had made from they made glue from all kinds of different things.
And he shot that probably into an animal and it fed his family.
And then that was lost in the dirt.
And then a thousand years later, somebody found it.
She was all in until after, like, once we caught, I should have just clipped it, threw it back in, but I was just determined to get, you know, how you are when you're stuck.
Like, oh, it's fucking coming out.
And it was just horrible.
Yeah.
I looked like, oh, yeah.
But the good news is, I think I've got her talking to one to deer hunt after I do because Rihanna goes, Cam's assistant.
She loves Bunny, and I think that'd be digestible for Bunny.
Like if she went with another chick that was cool, you know what I mean?
I've got a little Beaumar nose button that touches my nose.
I feel that on my nose every time where the string touches my nose, this little thing just kind of pinches at your nose, let you know you're in the right spot.
That's why I said earlier, sometimes when I'm in the pantry, Mary B would be like, who's what version of you is in the pantry?
Is it the kid you or is it the adult you that's not answering an email?
Because sometimes this is how deep addiction runs.
Sometimes that relapse will be caused by literally an unresponded email that you just let sit there and torture you, but you don't notice it because it's just nagging at you.
Just that, why don't you just tell that guy that you're not interested?
Why don't you just tell, why are you avoiding that?
It's like you're just constant, the food is a way of not having to deal with or even say, so I sit Bunny down, I go, baby, I'm probably going to start, give me some grace.
I sit my whole house down and go, I'm going to try to do an effort to communicate how I feel in real time.
And I might be abrasive at first because this is a new concept.
I normally have to go like chew on things for a few hours to make sure I don't misrepresent my thoughts.
You know what I mean?
I was like, but sometimes in those few hours, I'll find myself in the pantry to distract yourself.
Yeah, so I was like, you know, if y'all just give me some grace, and what I need y'all to do is just be a mirror for me.
And just go, hey, I got you, but think about the way you said that.
Just put it back.
Just make me see it.
You know what I mean?
Just make me mirror it.
And they were so patient with me.
Bunny's a gangster, though.
She'd be the first one to be like, oh, there goes little snippy there, aren't we?
Little ass holding on.
I'd be like, fair.
She'd be like, she's like, I got it.
Probably could have said it different.
Love you.
I'd be like, fair.
You know what I'm saying?
But it was just me learning how to communicate my thoughts.
And now it's like, but it was so many of these little trigger things that I found that would be what would send me back.
I keep saying the pantry.
The pantry is the gas station.
Anywhere I can closet eat.
Right, right.
I just give it a place.
It's like Cam was telling me about the pain cave idea the other day.
It's like to me, that's what the pantry's always been.
Not the pain cave, but the idea of it's a it represents a lot.
You know what I mean?
But when I'm in the pantry, now I know why.
I can literally, once again, reset, reconnect, re-engage.
You know what I mean?
In any situation.
If I'm at a party now and I think about eating or I think about drinking, I can go outside.
I can hit a joint twice.
I can reconnect with myself.
What do you think about drinking for in there?
What do you need to prove?
Who are you embarrassed that you're not being cool enough around right now?
Because as long as you're not dwelling on other people's opinions and thoughts, because a lot of those people, one of the things that they do when they're saying negative things is they're avoiding introspection.
They're avoiding their own personal criticism of themselves.
So they're doing that by putting that on you.
So by putting negative thoughts on you and negative comments on you, what they're really showing is that they're damaged and that they're avoiding that self-analysis that leads to you having to make changes for yourself.
So instead, they're just shitting on other people.
There's a lot of people.
That's an addiction.
That's a giant addiction that people have.
Not just to being on social media, but to talking on social media, commenting on social media and being out, you know, just being negative.
Well, my favorite quote is: the booze mean nothing to me.
I've seen what makes them cheer.
You know what I mean?
Your booze mean nothing to me.
I've seen what you cheer at.
You know what I'm saying?
It's like, oh, dude, you think I care about them booze?
It also reminds me of the story of the donkey, the father and the donkey.
I don't know if you ever heard this story, but the sons, the father's walking with the son, and the son's riding a donkey, and they're going through this little village.
And somebody goes, Won't you look at that?
Look at that old man.
Look at that.
That poor boy's making that old man walk.
So the man thinks, oh, I don't want to think bad of my grandson.
So he tells the grandson, hey, in the next town, right before we go, I'm going to hop on the donkey and you walk.
So he hops on the donkey and they start walking.
And somebody goes, Can you believe that old man's making that little boy walk by himself?
So he stops.
He says, Fuck it.
I'll just buy the kid a donkey.
So he buys the kid a donkey.
They're going through the next city and they're both walking beside their donkeys, right?
No, they're both on their donkeys.
And somebody goes, well, look at them two people just beating the death, beating to death, them poor old donkeys.
Them old donkeys just can't do nothing.
He said the next town he tells us to the grandson, he goes, Fuck it, we'll just walk beside the donkeys.
So they're walking beside the donkey, and you know what somebody screams, don't you?
Look at them perfectly two good donkeys they're not using.
Those donkeys should be getting put to work.
And the moral is he couldn't do anything to make anybody happy.
I've never been able to see myself like this, but like, I'm going to be like in top shape, Joe.
You know what I mean?
Like, I was watching you with them kettlebells today, and while I'm running, I was thinking to myself, the next time I do this podcast, if Joe has me back, God willing, I'll fucking, I'm going to do that workout with him and I'm going to blow his mind.
I'm going to make him in that action bronchus my friend.
So I say this out of love.
I'm going to finish that workout.
You're going to shake my hand and be like, dude, you did better in action.
You know what I'm saying?
Like, it's like, you know what I mean?
Like, I was watching it like, I'm fucking coming for that.
You know what I mean?
Like, that's the kind of shape I want to be in.
Like, man, stuff, Joe, I didn't feel like a man.
Dude, at 500 pounds, I couldn't walk a mile.
My video guy, Andy, you've met him a few times, tall ball guy.
That's real fun.
He said something to me when I was losing this weight that broke my heart because he's such a good kid.
When I finally got down to like 300, he looked at me and said, dude, you're like, I just need you under 250.
And I was like, what for?
And he was like, because then if anything ever goes wrong, I know I can throw 250 pounds over my shoulder and I can fire him and carry you out of somewhere.
And I was like, what a sweet soul that you have secretly been looking at me all these years.
Like, what if something happens to the jelly and I can't get him up?
Like I'm going to die right here because I just physically don't have enough strength in one arm to get me from, you know, I roll over like this to get me up off of my other arm.
I can tell you right now, I could do 20 push-ups, though.
The problem with Bert is that that dude, this is what I love about Bert that makes Bert so special is that Bert, you remember when he ran a half marathon or marathon or something without training him?
It's connected to you being one of the most genuine, sweet, funny, show-up for you dudes I've ever met in my life.
Like six-pack or 400 pounds, dude, your heart is the size of a horse.
You know what I mean?
Like Bert Kreiser is the new friends.
That's one of the ones I pray for.
Burt Chrysler, Cam Haynes.
I prayed for new kins.
He sent me a bunch of really cool ones.
A bunch of wild ones.
Joe Rogan, Tony Hitchcliffe, a bunch of fuck-ups, but they were good dudes.
You know what I'm saying?
Like real, real slightly outside of normal people, but are great guys.
You know, Burt Chrysler is a great, his friendship's done a lot for me.
I hope me showing up.
He hasn't really, he's seen me whenever at wrestling, but I think when I show up to this 5K and I do it in 30 minutes, I hope that's the moment Bert's like, all right, baby, I'm with you, Jelly.
And immediately, just like, nah, man, we're hitting hills, dude.
Like, every time I can hit a hill, I'm now looking for hills in life.
You know what I mean?
Like, I'm looking for, like, how can I make this run a little harder?
Like, when Cam tells me we're at Mile Five, he's like, I'm proud of you.
Did your PR?
I was like, we better do 6'2 then, baby.
It ain't a 10K if we don't do another mile point too.
You know what I mean?
Like, immediately, I was like, we got to go.
It's just been, it's the, it's the effort.
But helping the self, knowing you want to change, and then not being afraid to just go ask, not being ashamed to just go to your wife, because that's a little embarrassing.
And be like, hey, can you just like had the dark chocolate?
And they're who dark chocolate bars.
Bunny's extremely healthy.
You know what I mean?
Like, has always been.
Them hoo-dock chocolate bars are so good.
But the problem is, I don't know how to eat one.
They're only 380 calories.
But if there's five of them in there, I'll eat all five for sure.
You know what I'm saying?
You know, so some nights you'd leave me a little half a bar out or something.
Yeah, that's another thing about phones that makes it very difficult for people to have meaningful conversations because everybody's so attached to their goddamn devices.
Even while you're talking to them, they're checking this and checking that.
You feel you're going, yeah, yeah, oh, yeah, that's real.
Oh, yeah.
And they're just scrolling and half paying attention to you.
It's like one of the things that I've said about this podcast is like one of the most unexpected things about it is this education that I've got in talking to people.
Not just like listening to their stories and listening to whatever their expertise is.
But it's also just the learning how to talk to people.
Because you're sitting here for three hours or whatever it is with no distractions and no interruptions.
And because of that, you learn this sort of ebb and flow of human conversation.
So for me, it's so hard to have a bad conversation.
When I'm out with people that are bad at having conversations, to me, it's fucking painful.
It's like, oh, God.
It drives me crazy.
Watching people talk over people, watching people that aren't listening.
There's some words that come from a person, I guess.
But there's no human.
Like, we're designed to talk to each other this way.
The spiritual fulfillment, the psychological fulfillment that comes from talking to a human being and making a genuine connection and understanding more about that person.
And then by also doing that, you understand more about yourself.
Like when someone reveals something to you that's very meaningful and very intimate, like you go, oh, wow.
Or maybe I can, maybe I'm looking at myself the wrong way or looking at people the wrong way.
And, you know, and you're just like this slow learning process of how to interact with people better.
And that's all kids today that are on their phone all day long, they're psychologically stunted.
You know, we're stunting their social growth and their development of just most people don't, most kids today barely know how to communicate with each other.
Especially even long form like this, it's the ability to really get, you don't really know how somebody feels about something until you really get into a conversation, like a real conversation.
And these kids aren't having those conversations with each other.
It's all in micro clips and micro spots.
And me and my daughter talk about this a lot because lucky for, I was blessed that she's a conversationalist.
She's kind of, she's like me.
She will have a meaningful conversation.
So I'm, I'm, but I look at my nine-year-old who's a little younger than her, obviously.
She's 17.
My daughter goes to college next year.
And my nine-year-old's a little different, though.
He communicates good, but he's still in that, you know, video game world.
Like he just, it's a different thing where Bailey still really appreciates us, sit around the, I don't know, man.
I grew up in a household where we, I told you this story.
My mom would sit at the kitchen table and tell us stories like me and you are talking right now for hours.
We had a JRE every night.
You know what I'm saying?
You know, she'd smoke cigarettes and tell stories, and it was just like super charming.
And, you know, it's, so my daughter grew up a lot like that, and I'm really proud of that.
You know, she grew up sitting in a room and having those kind of commercial, like real long form, because that's how you know how you really feel about it.
It's what therapy did for me, too.
Was whenever I quit doing things at a surface level, when it started going, yeah, that's cool, but like, really, when was the first time you remember being fat?
I think people have a hunger for it, which is why this emergence of long-form conversations into the zeitgeist has been surprising to a lot of people.
Because, you know, when I first started doing this podcast, one of the funny things that Ari Shafiro always said to me that I'll never let him live it down because he was always like, you got to edit your show.
And then now I'm like, remember when you told me that?
Ha ha.
Because I don't think that people realize how many people are starving for real conversation.
You know, this is one of the reasons why, like, when that Kamala Harris thing went down, where I had Trump on the podcast and Kamala Harris kept resisting coming on the podcast, they wanted to do it for like 45 minutes.
They wanted to do it in a conference room with a bunch of aides around.
They wanted to do it in DC.
I was like, no, no, it has to be here and it has to be three hours.
Like, she's got to sit down.
Like, because it takes a while to get inside someone's head.
You got to, you talk, you could bullshit me for 40 minutes.
Somebody's, Joe's going to find out who this person is.
You know what I mean?
Like, he's going to, it's like, and that's back to like, because we don't know who we are until we start having real conversations.
Right.
This goes back to what me and you started with this.
That we don't know who we are until you started having real conversations.
I don't know how it started, whether it was in the green room with some of your comic friends.
You were like, dude, we have the greatest conversations in here.
We should do this.
You know what I mean?
Like, these are funny.
I don't know, but something happened where you recognize, like, this is rare that people have conversations this funny, this good, but also this cathartic.
Like, there's moments we've laughed, we've cried, like, it's every podcast of yours.
You know what I mean?
Where, because you can't spend three hours with somebody and not see the full dynamic human.
Yeah, and I think there's a hunger that people have for finding out that other people have similar thoughts to them.
And maybe not even, maybe different thoughts in similar situations.
And that someone has had a better way of approaching something.
And it's educational, like to your soul.
There's something about it.
About like, we all want to pretend that we exist in a vacuum and everyone wants to pretend they're a loner.
And I'd rather be alone.
Like, shut up.
No, you wouldn't.
You'd only rather be alone if the people around you suck.
If the people around me suck, yeah, I'd rather be alone.
But I have great friends.
I like being around my friends.
It's like, it's not shallow to want to be around a bunch of awesome people.
But there's this thought that like, you know, that we are, that we exist on our own.
And you don't.
We're a collective.
Like the human species itself is a hive.
And it's one of the things we're learning about the negative impacts of that hive being connected to social media because you're not really connecting with people, but we're also experiencing this thing that's similar to a hive.
And so there's a writer, Avi Levinovitz, who talks about this.
And the way he described it rather, is that it's like processed food.
You're getting processed information.
And instead of real information, like on social media, you're getting this processed thing that's boiled down with no nutrients in it, but you keep consuming it because you're so hungry because you're not getting the real thing.
You're just stuffing your face with stuffing your mind with process information.
I think that's an apt way to put it because that's really what's going on.
It's like we all want real connection.
We're just worried.
We're worried that someone's going to reject us.
We'll worry that someone's going to be rude to us.
We're worried that someone's judging us, that someone's going to think they're better than us, or that they're going to think we lack or whatever it is.
There's this like there's a thing that we all hunger for.
And I think for a lot of people, what they get if they don't have it near them, if they haven't done what you've done and found a great group of friends, they can get it through podcasts.
They can get it through people talking and communicating and being real and being interested and being curious and learning and just being cool to each other.
And it's heartwarming.
It's like it fills something in you that we're missing because we're being poisoned by these fucking devices.
And Brandon Lake couldn't make it for some reason.
I was like, this is bad.
I've never been more nervous.
I go out for sound check.
I'm bawling, crying.
And I'm like, dude, this is so crazy.
And then I walk out and I'm like, when I go to do it, right before I go out, they come to me and go, hey, Jennifer Hudson's going to come out at the very end and do hallelujah with you or just do hallelujah.
You just praise for a minute while she does it.
I was like, the Jennifer Hudson?
They were like, yeah.
I was like, so Jennifer Hudson walks over to me.
I love her.
She goes, all right, what do you want?
She's so sweet.
She's like, I'm open for notes.
You got any suggestions?
It's one of the greatest female vocalists ever.
I do not have a suggestion.
We'll start there.
I am.
Jennifer, I'm embarrassed.
You have to sing near me.
And I'm like, and she goes, and then it hit me and I looked at her and I'll never forget this moment.
She goes, what do you think we should do?
I said, we give them Jesus.
I said, I think that's why I'm here alone.
I think, you know, I'm the one that's supposed to bring Jesus here.
Like, I know it's a Jesus thing, obviously, but like, we're supposed, this is supposed to be a, she grew up in the South too.
She grew up in Chicago.
You know, she grew up Midwest.
And I go, this is supposed to be the church we grew up in, Jennifer.
She was like, that's all I needed to hear.
Oh, Joe.
Just when I had the best vocal performance of my life, Jennifer Hudson comes out and takes them to church.
I want to play that because we're going to show you something.
I'm going to show you something.
That was a really powerful moment because you were talking about how you would listen to that song in prison, you know, and how you went to the Opry and you sat there.
To say congratulations on all the great things happening in your career and to thank you for the positive difference you're making in the lives of so many people who need the help.
You're doing great work, buddy.
And I'll never forget meeting you on the Grand Old Opry and how much it meant to me to hear you say my music helped you get through some really tough times.
That's one thing country music does really well.
And who would have ever dreamed back then that I'd be back at the Opry House today to say, Jelly Roll, you're officially invited to become a member of the Grand Ole Opry.
It's an honor to say welcome to the family, brother.
I will tell you 100%, without doubt, you are changing people's lives and you're enriching people's lives by being you, by being a real person going through a real life moment.
You know, it's just like, even then I was having a moment where I was like, if they ever actually, you know, I never thought I, like, when Jordan and Jen invited me to the Grand Old Opry, I never thought that would happen.
I never thought that I'd be allowed to play the Grand Old Opry.
You know what I mean?
Yeah.
And then to be a member of it, and I'll never forget watching Luke Combs when they asked him to be a member.
And just like, I think it's the first time I ever seen Luke emotional, you know?
And I just remember being like, nah, it'll never happen.
Just like I remember looking at Cam, like, I'll never be able to run a 5K, or you know what I mean?
Like, man, I don't know what can happen, dude, man.
If God gets involved, you have a little humility, I think Nebraska can work itself out, Joe.